How to choose a Broker to suit YOUR trading style

What type of Trader are you and which broker may suit you best? This is a very important question.

In order to trade successfully, you have to know yourself and decide what services you require from your broker. Being unclear about your service needs will eventually result in disappointing trading results.

Are you in the early stages of trading and perhaps in a full time job?

Some traders, although interested in the markets, are too busy with their work commitments and are, out of pure time constraints, unable to analyse the markets independently. Their working day does not leave any time to check the markets for signals and to update trailing stops. These traders are best served with a full service broker who provides trading advice in various financial instruments on a daily basis, thus making it easy for the client to follow the recommendations without having to analyse the markets independently themselves. This will save a lot of time and is, for this group of traders, perhaps This is the only practical way to gain market exposure.

The time poor trader would ideally be best served with a ‘full service’ broker, providing education, advice and support as part of the overall service, but charging only for brokerage. Ideally, the broker would have a systematic approach to the market and a proven track record in recommendations. We believe that Kinetic Securities fits this model and we invite traders to give them a call and check them out. Ask for Athol Nourse and tell him that Trading Australian Shares recommended you. He will give you good information and all the help you need at no obligation.

Many brokers these days are ‘execution only’ and will no longer provide trading advice, recommendations and support. They expect their clients to be independent self starters placing their trades without any further support. Such a broker is obviously not the appropriate broker, should you fall in the above mentioned group.

Are you self directed and have some trading experience?

If you are a self directed trader and can allocate more time to analyse markets on a daily basis and check for trading signals, then you would be able to get more involved in the trading process and be able to more easily adapt your trading to your personal objectives and circumstances. Moreover, following the markets is never boring. Such an approach would require a reasonable effort in studying the markets and trading systems. If would also require a daily analysis of the markets. If you have a systematic, organized and well thought out approach, daily analysis will usually take very little time.

If you are this kind of self directed trader and can spend a lot of time reading and educating yourself, you could trade quite successfully by using End of Day prices. You would choose to trade from the daily candle stick charts (daily open, high, low, close) and do not need go to a short term intraday time frame.

For this trading style, most analysis can be effectively carried out after the market is closed and orders can be placed when it is convenient for the trader, usually outside market hours. Such a strategy would allow trading and analysing the Australian markets somewhere between 4 pm (just after the market close) and 10 am (just before next day’s market opening) at a time and place convenient for the trader. Analysis would take perhaps 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week, and could easily fit into a work schedule. However you must be able to do some research and learn to understand fundamental and/or technical analysis.

Should you be this type of trader, we would suggest Comsec or Westpac Broking as your broker. Do not hesitate to check them out.

Are you a CFD trader, a day trader or looking to trade other markets?

If you are this type of trader, you may be able to and wish to spend a lot of your time trading. Perhaps even hope to become a full time trader. In this case, you probably are already quite familiar with research and analysis and wish to be more independent. You may wish to trade shorter time frames and watch the market carefully, day by day.

Perhaps you wish to trade CFDs or indices. In this case I would suggest you check outIG Markets, they have a very good platform with an excellent intraday chart and have reasonable brokerage as well. You can trade CFDs, indices and forex with them.

I wish you success. Should you need further information, please send me an email. But never forget to further your education in the share market.